 | R E V I E W Chat Mapper by John Hattan, posted 8/20/10 We review an interesting tool for designing player interactions in games. |  | P R O G R A M M I N G A Type-safe Generic Pointer by Francis Xavier, posted 8/17/10 A safer alternative to void*, any_ptr can point to any type of object and provide type-safe, const-correct access to it |
| P R O G R A M M I N G A Collection of Examples of 64-bit Errors in Real Programs by Andrey Karpov, posted 8/4/10 This article is the most complete collection of examples of 64-bit errors in the C and C++ languages. The article is intended for Windows-application developers who use Visual C++, however, it will be useful for other programmers as well |  | R E V I E W Alibre Design by John Hattan, posted 8/3/10 We review an interesting 3D mechanical CAD program. |
| Saturday, September 4, 2010 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land (Returns!) | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:51:25 AM | |
 Entries from 7/23 - 9/3Hey there everyone and apologies for letting this feature slack off the past month. I'm going to assume, given the fact that after two weeks AWOL I hadn't received a barrage of "where the hell are you??" emails and messages that you all were just being very understanding of the fact that sometimes I get a bit extra busy given that GDNet is by far not the only thing I work on these days. So, thanks for giving me a little vacation time ;) I decided to take the time to catch up on ALL the journal entries that were posted in my absence. I've left out the Pick of the Week for this entry but have bolded some interesting entries below. I'm also going to remind everyone to reference their journal entries as much as possible when they make new posts about previously-talked-about subjects. Yes, when someone views your journal's main page they see a lot of entries, but when I link to an entry or even when someone is taken to an entry from a search result (need I remind you all how much Google indexes this site??) they only see that single entry. If you'd like people to read more about your project or anything that you reference in your post, don't expect them to take the time to hunt it down themselves. Link everything you can, it'll make the difference when a mildly-interested person becomes hooked when they read more about what you're doing. Welcome new Journal Land citizens dx elliot and Richard Geslot! Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Friday, September 3, 2010 | |
| The GameDev.net Daily | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 12:55:23 AM | |
| It's about that time for yet another PAX! And, weirdly enough, it sounds like there's actually a fair bit of announcements that'll be coming out of PAX this year. Not least of which is the potential for Duke Nukem Forever which I guess is something people still care about? Anyway, here's a very special game-heavy GameDev.net Daily! A new game from Housemarquee, the developers of the superb Super Stardust HD, is debuting at PAX and it is called Outland. The game is citing influences such as Prince of Persia, Out of this World, and Ikaruga. ALL OF WHICH MAKE ME SO HAPPY. Ubisoft is doing... something strange. The game, entitled Bloody Good Time, is being developed by Outerlight, the developer of The Ship. The game apparently takes place on various movie sets. And it involves clowns. So, naturally, I will be killing all the clowns. All of them. Yakuza 4 is seeing a North American and European release in Spring 2011! This is great news! We should all rejoice. Speaking of 2011, a Take-Two earnings reports indicates that the much-delayed and fairly gossip/drama-heavy L.A. Noire has been delayed to the first half of 2011. This seems to indicate that the game is, in fact, still being developed, which is surprising. That said, it's a period noir game set in L.A. It is thoroughly impossible for me not to be completely excited about it. Finally, IndieCade announced its finalists for this year's event in October in Culver City, CA. This is one of those events that I really, really wish I could get out to, but, alas, it's not in the cards. So, someone go as my proxy! Here's hoping everyone at PAX this weekend has a grand ol' time! For the rest of us, at least in the US, it's Labor Day! So we get a totally rad three-day weekend. And that means: Valkyria Chronicles 2 and Metroid: Other M. I think! Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Thursday, September 2, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 8:08:26 PM | |
| It is the Eve of Earl, and while the storm's not predicted to hit too hard here near Sandy Hook, I'm going to be getting back to prepping right after this, just in case the sucker decides to linger or track back west. Me? I want a storm. BRING IT ON, EARL!! More layoffs hit LucasArts. Speaking of emergencies, what's happening over at LucasArts? It appears that with development on the Force Unleashed II having wound down quite a few people have become redundant, and some reshuffling of teams within the company has left as many as 60 people without jobs. Additionally, cutbacks in studio projects were included, such as no more Foce Unleashed III, and the cancellation of another Star Wars project has been said to have had an affect on the decline at Krome Studios in Australia. I'm seeing a less and less chance of a new X-Wing game :( iPhone gaming heats up with Unreal 3 also demoed in iOS. It hasn't even been a month since John Carmack wowed people at QuakeCon by showing id's Rage technology running on the iPhone and Epic is now firing back with their own demo of Unreal Engine 3. Even though Epic has been working on a port to iPhone for some time, this is the first we've heard of any real licensing opportunities. And what would those be, perhaps? Well, Gamasutra has the details in their interview with Epic prez Mike Capps but Develop has the short and skinny: Free. At least, until people start making some serious dough. Then Epic'll want a slice. Oh and don't forget you can download the demo off the App Store for free to oogle over it yourself. Cross platform iOS/Android multiplayer? OpenFeint makes it so. My buddy Jason Citron of OpenFeint had a cool announcement this week - the release of their PlayTime SDK, which allows for players from both iOS and Android platforms to join together in multiplayer game matches. If you're looking for another way to expand your game's community, this certainly sounds like a great option. A "Casual" and "Core" choice of SDK packages lets you decide how much you want to get PlayTime integrated with your title. TIGA offering individual memberships. UK trade body TIGA, formerly comprised of studio members, has started to accept individuals as members as well. Those in the UK looking to back an industry advocate body who don't feel they get anything from the IGDA might want to look into this. 2010 Game Connect: GDAA Calls For Papers. Get 'em in by Sept 10th! Hurry up! Oh and if you happen to remember Industry Broadcast, well site founder Ryan Wiankco is back to narrating some game development articles for you to listen to... wherever. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. Still learning how to code? If you are, or know someone who is, you may want to point them towards Google Code University. I know, the first thing you think is "Google Code"? I mean, they got their own OS, why not programming language? Well, really it's more like "Code University, by Google" featuring languages like Python, Java and Go. Do you think Blizzard will let this iPhone/iPad SC2 app make it to the App Store? I'd so use it, just because I hate keyboard shortcuts. What's Inside An Atari 2600?  Read this post in ChineseRead More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Wednesday, September 1, 2010 | |
| gDEBugger V5.7 - Enhances iPhone and iPad on-device user workflow | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 5:24:29 PM | |
 Graphic Remedy is proud to announce the release of gDEBugger Version 5.7 for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, iPhone and iPad.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| jMonkey Engine 3 - Alpha2 Released | |
| Posted by: Erlend Sogge Heggen at 5:14:07 PM | |
| The second alpha release of the Java game library jMonkeyEngine 3 is now official. See the jmonkeyengine.com blog for the complete news article, and download the SDK install (jMonkeyPlatform) from the open repository. Highlights include a new input system, PSSM & SSAO, many physics improvements and intuitive material editing. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| GLBasic V8 is now available | |
| Posted by: Dream Design Entertainment at 5:11:47 PM | |
 GLBasic V8 is now available. Dream Design Entertainment is proud to announce the release of version 8 of GLBasic, it's popular BASIC programming language. Following feedback and suggestions from its users, GLBasic has been vastly updated to include many new features.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Next major release of iAuxSoft’s audio/networking/sql db C++ programming engines. | |
| Posted by: Dmitry Kostjuchenko at 5:07:12 PM | |
| iAuxSoft has just announced a next major release of the advanced programming engines dedicated to audio, networking and sql db interaction. This release introduces new interesting features along with bug-fixing. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Tuesday, August 31, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 7:39:05 PM | |
| If you're having a slow day, I recommend you read this post in the form of a rock ballad, or possibly as Bohemian Rhapsody. That'll solve the problem. Otherwise, this isn't set to music but it is a Perfect-Pitch GameDev.Net Daily! It's been several years since chipmaker AMD acquired graphics hardware company ATI, but they've finally decided to kill the ATI brand. Personally I'm concerned for the future of ATI's mascot Ruby, but that's another story. And if you want Eyefinity but did something silly like buying a DVI/HDMI monitor, they're rolling out a converter for you. My monitor's already DisplayPort...now if only I could afford two more. Or had desk space for them. The Xbox 360's directional pad, "d-pad" for short, sucks. If that's news to you, well you have been living in some kind of cave. They're now introducing a a transformers-style d-pad. I like how Major Nelson shows it off, non chalantly mentioning the community are "not big fans of the d-pad". Gotta love PR's clueless spin. Only five years and three refreshes late, but hey. They've also drained the color out of the face buttons, and if you've ever introduced someone to the 360 who isn't familiar with it, you'll understand why I think this is an incredibly stupid move. In any case, it's done so there you go. Continuing on the subject of stupid Xbox decisions, Microsoft is raising the price of Xbox Live Gold. I'm not even sure what to make of this decision, but apparently the way to survive in an increasingly long and competitive generation where your competitors are dramatically undercutting you, is to let them undercut you more. Interesting plan. And when it comes to competitors, Sony is intent on selling you on Move. I know I'm being negative today, but the demos seem awfully half baked for something that is rolling out in a few months. Sure Microsoft's Kinect games are somewhat painful to watch, but they are real games that exist and can be played. Sony is still showing tech demos. And just to round things off, here are some Kinect videos. Also, Sony does not like jailbreak devices. It's like I always say, those people who think they should own the devices they bought? Let them eat LAWSUIT. As for Nintendo? Keep on buying, because the DSi just got a price drop. Student ownership of code developed for classes is a tricky problem. DigiPen is an institution that assigns all of the student created intellectual property to the school. Luckily GamaSutra published an absolutely fantastic article to help clarify things. And it just happens to be written by one of our moderators, Mona Ibrahim. What a lucky coincidence! Read More.. | 16 Comments | |
| Monday, August 30, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 8:55:30 AM | |
| The Daily GDNet started in 1959 as a secret government project to deliver fresh gaming news to people worldwide. Eventually, it was co-opted by a man named Bob Arpa and his friend Freddie Inter. What we know of today as the Internet grew from Arpa and Inter's net, which itself was from GDNet. Scientists expect that the GDNet Daily will eventually expand to contain the whole of human knowledge every weekday. Famed weird-ass-videogame developer Atlus' parent company has merged it with a mobile development company. Atlus responded by emitting a sharp static scream, grabbing Japanese teenagers and throwing them into a bizarre pit of despair that melds the biggest terrors of Western and Eastern mythology. Hey, someone made a Baby Segway with a Wii balance board. I'm kind of surprised how well it works. Perhaps this Chinese Kinect knockoff will also help babies in some as-yet-undetermined fashion. Gabe Newell says that the Team Fortress 2 videos are Valve exploring moviemaking in case they want to do a Half-Life movie. I've not seen too many movies with silent protagonists - even the later Mr. Bean movies had him saying one or two lines before continuing to If you're like me and still cling lovingly to computer RPGs, you probably enjoyed the Witcher in a way that is not appropriate to share in public. Well, it's back, of course, and there's an interview on Gamasutra about the sequel's development. In indie game news, you're going to want to check out this extremely disturbing (but fanatically well simulated) serial killer Roguelike which is really a mean hoax to make me write bad news posts. I bet when you woke up this morning, you didn't think about how much you wanted to learn about the history of Indian disco. Get over it. Read More.. | 9 Comments | |
| Friday, August 27, 2010 | |
| The GameDev.net Daily | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:24:29 AM | |
| I am interested in most phases of data processing. A neato single-player DLC pack, Minerva's Den, is coming out for Bioshock 2. I'm a huge fan of developers releasing single-player DLC, so this is great. And while Bioshock 2 wasn't quite the game its predecessor was, it had an absolutely amazing final quarter of gameplay. So good. The Third Birthday is hitting PSPs some time next year. A character designer for the game is also hopeful that the other Parasite Eve games will be released a PS1 Classics before The Third Birthday is released. This is a thing I am wholly in favor of. Best Buy is going to start accepting used games. The company has been testing the service for a while, but is now rolling out the service to over 600 stores nationwide. Ubisoft's Red Storm Studio laid off 38 employees yesterday. Red Storm has been helming the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon franchise since 1996, but recently Ubisoft has apparently been spreading the development of those games across numerous studios worldwide. All of the unaffected employees at Red Storm will, according to an Ubisoft statement, continue to work on the multiplayer component of Tom Clancey's Ghost Recon Future Soldier in anticipation for the game's release early next year. Here's hoping anyone affected by the lay-offs lands on their feet. And, uh, I guess Playboy is forming a game label. The "adult entertainment company" will initially be partnering with Bigpoint for the release of their free-to-play MMO Poisonville. According to a company statement, Playboy considers the video game industry a "a growing, mainstream area" and although they haven't unveiled much of their forthcoming business plan, the company is slated to target 18-35 year old males. Great. What an under-serviced demographic. That's the week! I actually haven't done much video gaming lately, so I feel mighty ashamed about that. I do want to see Piranha 3D, though. I like [some of] Alexandre Aja's movies and was absolutely astonished to discover he directed the movie. I also like piranhas. In three-dee. I guess? Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Thursday, August 26, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 8:21:40 PM | |
| It's time for another Late Night Daily with yours truly. Let's all get caught up together on what's been going on this past week shall we? Studio News: Krome, Cohort, Realtime Worlds, Eutechnyx, Gamer-Party. I'm sorry to see that Krome Studios has once again announced it will have to be trimming staff, and this time it looks like an entire studio branch may be shutting down completely. You can discuss this more where there's already a thread in the forums about it. There are several Krome GDNet members here - best wishes to them all. The cutbacks continue, I'm afraid, as Dundee-based Cohort Studios lost 27 staff members, chopping the studio population by half. Not all is lost for Dundee though, as indie studio Eutechnyx is considering a new Dundee studio that would be able to snap up those recently set adrift. Additionally, UK TV company Channel 4 is pledging $1.5M to the Dundee game development community to be put towards funding games based on its various shows and properties. All this is in the wake of Realtime Worlds, which is working very hard to pull out of administration and show some value for APB. Finally, to end on a light note, a new UK casual games developer has been founded in Gamer-Party. EA sticks to its guns in MoH controversy sparked by UK Secretary of State. Bravo for EA, not bowing to outside pressure on its latest Medal of Honor game, which lets players choose to be Taliban during multiplayer and once again places players in realistic wartime settings. Unlike games depicting older wars and atrocities (like the Nazis), it seems the raw open wounds of many military families and those closely involved in the various conflicts are calling out "too soon". UK Secretary of State Liam Fox spurred things on by imploring UK game stores not to stock the title at all: "I am disgusted and angry. It's hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game," he stated. In response, EA pointed out that "we give gamers the opportunity to play both sides. Most of us have been doing this since we were seven: someone plays the cop, someone must be robber." Ultimately, EA hopes the fact that they developed the game closely with the US Military and the Congressional Medal of Honor Society will show people they aren't simply using the conflict as story fodder. Steam sale saves the day at Introversion. UK's well-known indie studio Introversion has been weathering the tough times just like everyone else, with their own ups and downs. Lately however they've been mostly down, forced to revert back to their original 4-person team of developers. Then came a breath of fresh air in the form of a Steam sale for DEFCON: "...the Valve sale -- it was just phenomenal...The sale did in the ball park of $250,000 -- so when you're back to being a team of four people, that's a lot of revenue." Introversion now has the funds to continue work in its two projects under development. Choose your own price sale stats for Gish. Chronic Logic recently held a sale for Gish that let buyers choose the price of the game before purchase, a sale technique pioneered by developer 2D Boy with World of Goo and later expanded upon with charitable contributions by a gathering of indie developers. Anyways, here are their stats for the sale, which brought in a net of $1,059.18. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. Wanna get thrown back in time? Check out this Activision corporate commercial from 1981. That was a year before I was even born. Still, I couldn't help but chuckle right at the beginning when the voice over said "amazing graphics". Ever wonder what the Playstation controller's button symbols really mean? Well, wonder no longer! I like game soundtracks. I've said this here before. I especially like free game soundtracks, which is why I'm listening to Shank right now. (It's also a pretty rad game). Maybe when I scrounge up some more extra cash, I'll hunt down and rustle me up the Red Dead Redemption soundtrack. They're even coming out with a limited vinyl release. What a perfect thing to play on your Denon 100 turntable. Hey, good luck to my buddy Mark DeLoura on his next project after departing from Google! Read this post in ChineseRead More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Tuesday, August 24, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 9:11:59 PM | |
| It's Tuesday evening, what else can I say? Let's move forwards together on a Newsilicious GameDev.Net Daily! A lawsuit against the developers of Lineage II is being allowed. The lawsuit claims that a player from Hawaii is so addicted that he's unable to function in daily life, and that NCSoft should pay damages because of the game's addictiveness. I'd like to suggest that Lineage II isn't nearly good enough for that to be plausible and maybe the guy's just suffering from run of the mill depression. Speaking of which, psychiatrists in South Korea are prescribing drugs for Starcraft addiction. It sounds silly at first, but it makes sense to me. The "addiction" is incidental, I imagine, and merely symptomatic of deeper problems. Of course, the MRI scan of patients shown pictures of Zerglings might be taking it a little far. Remember all those idiotic borderline illegal marketing campaigns? I fondly remember the Hitman one where they had a guy brandish a fake gun at a crowd. Good times. In any case, you can add Zynga to the list, which a stunt using fake $25,000 bills glued to sidewalks in San Francisco. Remember people, US currency denominations end at $100. I'll also admit, I'm not sure what makes this stunt illegal. Want to speak at GDC 2011? If you haven't submitted your proposal yet, hurry up -- the deadline's tomorrow the 25th of August! And for everyone who thinks indie games and Xbox Live Indie Games never go anywhere, feel free to shut up. James Silva's XNA-based creation hit 300K units sold, and the theme song is being released for Rock Band. Not only that, they're producing a T shirt to be sold by Hot Topic online, and probably brought back 20 years from now for kids who can't remember what on earth it was about. We've all been awaiting the availability of an integrated CPU/GPU unit for a couple years, and it's finally here. No, it's not AMD/ATI, nor Intel. Microsoft is the first on the market to pull it off. Granted it's not a desktop processor, and integration in consoles is hardly a new story. Still, lots of cool tech details. Am I above posting a video of booth babes from a game conference? It turns out that no, I am not. Read More.. | 9 Comments | |
| Monday, August 23, 2010 | |
| The GameDev.net Daily | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 10:51:17 AM | |
| GDNet Daily is not authorized for internal use. Please discontinue usage if you experience rashes, allergic reactions or persistent illusions that the videogame industry is moving inevitably towards solely making yoga simulators for the elderly. Shooty remake Goldeneye has some crazy details available, including new plot and some new focus on covert action. Valve's hardware survey results are in, with the newly-added software survey. What software do people who use Steam have installed? Steam, obviously. Why did you even ask? Beloved face-puncher Castle Crashers is coming to the PS3 this month. It's worth it - go pick it up. It won't come with a backpack, like the Crysis 2 special edition. If you're like me, you've never started a game company. What you and I probably didn't think about is where all that furniture will come from. The answer? Ikea. While Finland provides us with the demoscene graphics programmers and musicians that we need to make amazing games, Sweden provides us with the boxy turbocharged station wagons and hand-assembled MDF furnishings we need to bang our fists into when we scream at our middle managers to tighten up those graphics. Of course, it's entirely possible that they didn't buy their furniture at Ikea, but with such storied ties to the game industry, between the groundbreaking RPG Ikea Shopping Fantasy VI and the tactical strategy game Flatpack Warriors, it's really their only choice. Apparently tax breaks for game developers are important enough to become an opposition issue. I just saw this post about Warlock Bentspine, and I gotta admit it looks pretty cool. Looking forward to getting a chance to try it out. If you're someone who is stuck in the world's longest traffic jam, you have my sympathy. It might be faster to get out and walk at this point, although traffic is going so slow that a strip mall has literally been erected to service the needs of your fellow traffic jam denizens. Read More.. | 4 Comments | |
| Friday, August 20, 2010 | |
| The GameDev.net Daily | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 12:23:48 AM | |
| Hey! I hear tell that there's a Daily on this here video game development web site. HOLY CRAP IT'S JAGGED ALLIANCE 2. HOW GREAT IS THAT. EA wants everyone to know that they predicted APB's mediocre scores. Head of EA Partners (the distributor for Realtime World's APB), David DeMartini, had this to say: "We did suggest that where it landed from a review score standpoint was where we thought it was going to land from a review score standpoint." This is a professional and courteous way of saying "we told them so." The whole RTW thing is incredibly sad, though, and it sounds like a complete mess. I'm really hoping for the best for all of those effected by the lay-offs, and I really hope that RTW can find an arrangement which allows them to continue operating in some capacity. Apparently there has been interest in Project: MyWorld and, as such, some of the team has been hired back on. Castlevania: Lord of Shadows is coming out on October 5th; the game looks quite impressive. Double Fine's Costume Quest looks really neat. Atlus' new game, Catherine, (probably not safe for work) looks both completely amazing and completely incomprehensible. I have no idea what kind of game it's actually supposed to be, but I'm actually okay with that and am incredibly curious to see where it goes from here. Have a good weekend, kids! I've got a long couple of days ahead of me, but there's a lot of good contained therein. Not least of which is a girl, and Kane & Lynch 2, and Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light, and and and Ys Seven. Video. Games. Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Thursday, August 19, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:33:47 PM | |
| Hello readers! While I thank Trent for his Olympian description of my activities last week, I was really on top of a mountain watching the Perseid meteor shower. It was pretty spectacular, hopefully some of you got to see it as well. I was then kinda supposed to do his Friday Daily but returned home that night rather beat from hiking that same mountain and honestly just plain forgot. So. Apologies. Now - DAILY TIME!! Studio News: Socialspiel, N-Space, Sparkplay, Aeira. A new Vienna-based studio built by former employees of Rockstar, Socialspiel has just announced its first game Push, a turn-based browser-based online board game. Some more unfortunate studio cutbacks were announced from both n-Space and Sparkplay, with the latter being the hardest hit and having put up its FTP MMORPG Earth Eternal up for auction. However, just as there are always some people going out, there are also some coming in, and I'm sure the new Brazilian studio opened up by US-based MMO publisher Aeira Games is hiring right now. Activision clarifies IP ownership in Indie Contest. It seems people are still confused about whether or not submitting their games/concepts to Activision's Indie Contest will result in the publisher immediately owning all rights to it, so Gamasutra, in an interview with SVP of development Laird Malamed asked him about it and he clarified the stance Activision has for the contest: "Regarding the ownership of the ideas, everything that is submitted is owned by the person who submitted it, and we take no final ownership of the ideas, the concept, even if they win," said Malamed. "The only time ownership comes into question is if we decide to publish the game, and there's no requirement that anyone make a game that we would publish." Still a bit unsure? Take another look (or a first look) at Game Attorney Tom Buscaglia's take on the very fine legal print. 'Moral Kombat', 'Game Theory' documentaries available online. Created by Spencer Halpin, Moral Kombat "studies the controversial, polarizing subject of the video game controversy through a series of interviews with experts on both sides of the matter – some believing that violent games should be banned, others supporting their protection under the First Amendment." It was released back in 2007, so if you haven't seen it yet and are into this type of thing, check it out for free on Hulu (with some commercial interruption). The other documentary, Game Theory, was created by Scott Steinberg, and looks at why big game companies are refusing to change their strategies to match the change in the industry, such as limiting risk and sticking to big franchises. It's available to watch on YouTube or through Scott's blog. Be sure to check out the Daily Remainders below for lots of GDC Europe coverage from Gamasutra. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. So David Perry was the first I saw to post yesterday about Microsoft's announcement for Flight, their latest installment in the Flight Simulator franchise. Many people thought it was dead with the closing of ACES Studio, the last developers to work on the franchise, but MS never said with finality that the series was canceled. Now, my first reaction was of course to scream and shout with joy - until I noticed the purposeful lack of "simulator" from the title. While it's obvious (and not very surprising) that MS plans to create more of a flight game than a simulator, I only hope it doesn't leave us hardcore simmers out in the cold too much. Then again, FSX is still a pretty awesome platform, all things considered. And dammit, I still want my X-Wing game from LucasArts. Or Somebody Read this post in ChineseRead More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Wednesday, August 18, 2010 | |
| OpenFeint Launches 2.6, Connects iPhone + Android Games with Social Tools | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:16:38 PM | |
 After announcing its expansion to Android last month, Aurora Feint is today unveiling a viral game distribution system for its leading social gaming network, OpenFeint. With OpenFeint 2.6, players will be able to send SMS and e-mail game invites to any contact on their phone, helping accelerate social distribution for game developers. Available first on iOS devices, OpenFeint will launch this viral game distribution system cross platform following its expansion to Android.The new system is immediately available to OpenFeint’s 35 million players and their friends. It will work primarily through SMS and e-mail and let players send personal messages to contacts on their phones, inviting them to play the games they love. The inclusion of Android’s rapidly growing device base, with over 200,000 devices added daily, will only amplify the invitation system’s viral reach. Safeguards have been installed to prevent spamming. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Tuesday, August 17, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 7:31:40 PM | |
| The great thing about Tuesday evening is that an Oddly News Heavy GameDev.Net Daily fits right in with everything else. It's like that wonderful day when your yoyo finally gets a string and the whole thing finally makes sense. It's also a great time to practice raising one eyebrow. Let's get the unfortunate news out of the way -- Realtime Worlds is in serious trouble. The company behind APB and Crackdown entered administration, apparently similar to bankruptcy in the US. Hopefully most of the developers will get to keep their jobs, and maybe things will look up for the studio with the release of Crackdown 2. There were also layoffs at Visual Concepts, the developer behind NBA 2K11. I hear LucasArts is a bit of a mess. Let's be honest here -- Force Unleashed was a terrible game, FU2's debut at E3 was embarrassing, and now the studio's being gutted. A shake up might be a good thing, but it sure looks like rough times ahead for the Star Wars franchise. On the bright side, BioWare's upcoming Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic, will surely be fantastic. I'm actually considering joining this whole MMO craze. THQ made a pen-and-tablet peripheral for the Wii. It seems a little niche to me, but there you have it. Incidentally, an actual Wacom tablet can be had for less money and is a fabulous tool if you enjoy drawing. Remember how people keep saying PC gaming is dying? Starcraft 2 doesn't care. Wired published an opinion piece suggesting exercise ratings for video games. Apparently it would be a very effective way to deal with child obesity. The suggested rating scale is idiotic and vague, not to mention pretty much only interesting to people who are worried about child obesity. Why not add ratings for how 3D a game is, how much thinking a game requires, the net artistic worth of a game, and how effective the game is at educating players about human rights? Whether or not videogame related degrees are worth anything is still an open discussion, but an ever increasing number of schools are offering them. Personally I find the whole thing a little odd, but nobody thinks twice about art schools, law schools, film schools, music schools, or cooking schools so I guess it's to be expected. I realized we don't talk about exercise much. Maybe it's not surprising. In any case, I've been getting back in shape and I started by replacing the junky old sneakers with a pair of Nike Free 7.0 trainers. The whole barefoot running craze really interests me, and these shoes are an incredibly comfortable start down that path. Any of you wearing similar, barefoot-emulating shoes? What do you think about the whole idea? Read More.. | 13 Comments | |
| Monday, August 16, 2010 | |
| Matali Physics now supports Windows Phone 7 | |
| Posted by: komires at 4:31:52 PM | |
 Matali Physics is advanced, cross-platform, fully managed 3D physics engine, intended for the .NET platform. The latest build of the engine introduces support for Windows Phone 7. Available demo also shows the full physical 3D UI on Windows Phone 7.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 9:53:17 AM | |
| Has it really been another week since the last Monday Daily? I guess so, which is why you're getting another Daily today, on Monday. I'm excited for Fallout: New Vegas, and here's a small hands-on preview. There's almost some Deus Ex 3 gameplay in this video. We're so close to having an actual video reveal! Everyone is so angry in the future. Additionally, if you were charging players to play on your World of Warcraft private server, you owe Blizzard $88 million. If they could figure out how to make eighty-eight million dollars, why are they playing WoW? A lot of people have been linking me to Solipskier, which pairs a crazy music system with some incredibly entertaining gameplay. You're probably going to want to play it. Speaking of indie games, TIGSource's "A Game By Its Cover" contest is now in the voting phase. I'm really liking all the cat touching games, which is something I rarely (if ever) say about other competitions. Competitions like Ludum Dare 18, which is starting really soon now. As covered last week, id has released the GPL'd source code for Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory. Do you still have what it takes to comb through the source code for a Quake III-based game? Hopefully so, because id isn't going to license id Tech 5 to third parties. Afraid it was kind of a slow news day today, readers. Fear not - Promit will lead you by the hand through a land of wonderment and finding out about the videogame industry doing stuff. Read More.. | 10 Comments | |
| Thursday, August 12, 2010 | |
| The GameDev.net Daily | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 5:29:34 AM | |
| BAM. WOOSH. GAMEDEV.NET DAILY. I'm here today because Drew is doing something to mountains today and I'll be in LA all day tomorrow. SO HI! Limbo is doing very well on Xbox Live! The indie 2D platformer, about which I actually got called out on, had 160,000 players by the end of its first week on the marketplace. And by the end of the second week, it had 240,000 players. I'm still not an enormous fan of the game, but congratulations are in order to Playdead regardless of what your opinion of the game is. It's sold remarkably well for being such a "different" title. Valve may be doing something with Defense of the Ancients. Irrational is unveiling their new video game tomorrow! I think it's safe to say at this point that it is almost definitively not Bioshock. Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger says that "game playing and social networks is real, here to stay". Iger, in an earning call earlier in the week, went on to say that: "Obviously, the multitude of people that are already playing, there are half a billion people who are members of Facebook already. About 40 percent of those people participate in game playing." This is all backing up a statement that Disney made very obvious when it spent over $500M to acquire Playdom last month. Despite all of this, though, Disney reiterated their commitment to console games as well, though: "So, we're going to continue to [invest in] console games. They will primarily be Disney-branded, not all Disney-branded, and they will in most cases be derivative of product that's been made for other segments of the company, like our motion pictures." Google Ventures invested in iPhone developer ngmoco :). According to source TechCrunch: "The company, which is already profitable, took the money as part of a new round of funding -- probably in the $3-5 million range. ngmoco currently has some very popular games on iOS, including 'We Farm', which is currently the second most popular game on the iPad. The investment valued ngmoco well above $100 million, we've heard. This comes on top of a $25 million Series C round ngmoco closed in February." Have a good Thursday, video game developers of the world. You can bet I'll be rocking some more Persona 3 Portable and Knights in the Nightmare on my flights today. Oh, sweet, sweet portable video games. Also Gravity Hook HD on my iPhone because, holy crap, that game owns my soul. Read More.. | 4 Comments | |
| Monday, August 9, 2010 | |
| Esenthel Engine Now Supports Mac | |
| Posted by: Esenthel at 3:00:03 PM | |
 The Esenthel Engine now supports Mac OS X and support for the iPhone will be added soon. Esenthel Engine is a next-gen 3d game engine supporting unlimited sized worlds, advanced graphics and physics, which is powered by Nvidia’s PhysX and Bullet, enables sophisticated physics simulations, containing massive amounts of dynamic objects in the scene real-time. Esenthel Engine SDK comes with documentation and more than 100 tutorials.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 10:20:40 AM | |
| This week, we are going to be treated to an announcement of whatever new game that Irrational has in the pipeline. I'm hoping for System Shock 3, where Irrational throws off the chains of mainstream oppression and makes an immersive sim chock full of complex stats and bizarre physics interactions leading to delicious emergent gameplay punctuated by raw fear. Or maybe SWAT 5. Friend of the Daily Clint Hocking has headed to LucasArts, where he will work on an as-yet-announced project. Hopefully the new project will also involve setting wildfires to trap bad guys inside ramshackle wood-and-rust buildings. If you're like me, you play a lot of open world games wondering why the police officers don't pull you over for relatively major traffic infractions (such as illegal double parking, frequent hit and run, or driving over pedestrians, then doing donuts on their dead bodies). Well, Mafia II is here to help, with NPC vehicles that wait for traffic lights, yell at you when you hit them with your car and presumably drive ten under the speed limit all the time forever trying to make you late for work. Remember EverQuest? Well, it's back - with a distinctive art style. Apparently there is also a free to play version of EverQuest 2 available. In indie news, as Trent pointed out last week and I am reiterating to get more delicious sales, the developer of Machinarium is offering a "pirate amnesty," knocking down the price by 75 percent in an attempt to convert some of its ridiculous piracy rate to actual sales, no matter how low profit those sales may be. Here's hoping it helps! Additionally, there is apparently a place in New York state called Babycastles, it is an "indie arcade," and you already missed Phil Fish turning out. Looks like a cool idea, at least. Before you go today, Civilization Revolution for the iPhone is free today. Where's my Android version, 2K? If you're not so much for iPhones, you might want to check out your local K-Mart which is dumping consoles like Jack the Bear. Read More.. | 4 Comments | |
| Friday, August 6, 2010 | |
| The GameDev.net Daily | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 7:41:18 AM | |
| Hey! It's Friday! I'm so happy about this for so many reasons. IT'S BEEN A GOOD WEEK. Which makes for kind of an awkward segue into truly awful news about High-Voltage Software laying off twenty-five employees (which Drew commented on yesterday, but now there’s an actual company response). A representative of High-Voltage, the developer of The Conduit and forthcoming The Conduit 2 and The Grinder, gave a statement about the layoffs: "I can confirm that High Voltage Software has reduced some of our staffing based on our current production requirements and predictions of what is needed for the remainder of 2010. [...] We are sad to have to say goodbye to these employees and friends, but these changes are necessary to bring our organization to a healthy operational size." It's always unfortunate to hear this kind of stuff; here's hoping all of the impacted employees land on their collective feet. Batman and Catwoman are going to be kickin' it in Batman: Arkham City in Fall 2011. The absolutely excellent Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker helped out Konami this quarter. This makes me happy because, well, Peacewalker was rad. You bought it, right? Right? Amanita Designer, independent game developer of the critical darling Machinarium, is giving pirates a "Pirate Amnesty" sale. The sale has Machinarium at $5 USD, 75% of its normal price. According to source Gamasutra, Amanita is making a statement that any of the pirates -- of which comprised about 85-95% of the total people who played the game -- can now get in on this themed sale to essentially make amends for previous wrongs. The sale is, of course, open to anyone, but hopefully this little marketing skew can apply that extra necessary guilt to get the evil-doers to right past wrongs. That's about it for this week. I don't really have words to convey what a weird and great week it's been for me, but in between moments of amazing I've been rocking Knights in the Nightmare on DS (it's weird and great) and... Well. That's about it. Also I made a Tumblr site because I like posting random things. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Thursday, August 5, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 3:14:43 PM | |
| So who's still completely enamored by StarCraft 2? That would be me. Studio News: Whiteout, High Voltage. Former employees of GRIN have gathered to form the new studio Whiteout, which is the third to birth from the ashes of GRIN. Whiteout plans to focus on downloadable titles with the CryEngine 3 software. Meanwhile, High Voltage Software was recently forced to lay off about 20 employees, with a lot more layoffs potentially coming as well. Best of luck to all those devs under the axe. Google Wave waves goodbye. Google has finally admitted that Wave has been a failed experiment, and is stopping all development on the platform. The servers will remain running - for now - but will eventually be shut down. While the general community obviously has found the service lacking, there are of course plenty of people who leveraged the software effectively. Have any cool Wave uses to share in memory of? "Casual gamers" does not mean "laid back gamers". Zynga apparently thought that people wouldn't care too much when it decided to shut down one of its Facebook games called Street Racing, without bothering to offer up any sort of explanation as to why or giving the players some sort of credit for their spent monies that went into the now defunct game. Well, they were wrong. Bad dog! Visual Studio LightSwitch to empower non-programmers. Microsoft is getting ready to release a beta this month of a new product called LightSwitch - a drag-and-drop, visual programming tool meant for users unfamiliar with the nuances of coding to still build reasonable applications for their business use. Check it out starting August 23rd. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. Last week you saw pretty much every CPU ever. Now here's a video of pretty much every console ever. Kotaku has highlighted this really cool space MMO in development called Infinity. Sound familiar? That's because it's being developed by our own Ysaneya. Read this post in ChineseRead More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Wednesday, August 4, 2010 | |
| Gamestudio/A8 released | |
| Posted by: Conitec at 12:51:31 PM | |
 Gamestudio/A8 is the next generation of world's easiest development system for interactive 2D and 3D applications on Windows PCs. The portal renderer of the new developed A8 engine supports up to 200,000 3D objects per level. The engine uses nVidia PhysX for vehicle and rigid body physics. Animation and bitmap processing is now handled by shaders on the graphics hardware. Editors and content import workflow were greatly improved. Still, A8 is compatible to its predecessors and can run A6 and A7 projects.The free Gamestudio/A8 development system can be downloaded from www.3dgamestudio.com/download.php. Special licenses and educational versions are available upon request. Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Tuesday, August 3, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 2:50:39 PM | |
| Yet another Tuesday, yes another Promit-Sourced GameDev.Net Daily. I thought of the most incredibly clever thing to write here once, but I can't even vaguely remember what it was. Dang. Yes, StarCraft is popular. What else is there to say? Apparently retired NFL players are suing EA over the use of their likenesses in Madden 09. Can someone explain if this is actually a reasonable claim? It sounds bogus to me. We all love being online, and Nielsen has been looking at how Americans spend their time online. As usual, games are surprisingly big news. Social networks and email are also extremely popular, which really isn't that shocking. I always feel that it's immensely valuable to read post-mortems and similar discussions of how a game was designed and developed. GamaSutra just published Part 2 of a series on developing the combat in Uncharted 2. Definitely worth reading. Unfortunately I'm in a hurry today, and every day it seems like. That's what I get for running a startup company, I suppose. I'm curious though, what 3D art packages do you or your company rely on? I assume Max and Maya are the most popular, but there's a lot more packages out there and I'm wondering if anyone's found success (or failure?) off the beaten path. Read More.. | 8 Comments | |
| Monday, August 2, 2010 | |
| Hadron Game Engine v0.1.0 Released | |
| Posted by: Jarrod Davis at 4:44:08 PM | |
 Hadron Games™ is please to release a new build of Hadron Game Engine™ (HGE) an advanced 2D game engine for PC's running Microsoft Windows® and uses Direct3D® for hardware accelerated rendering. It's robust, designed for easy use and suitable for making all types of 2D games and other graphic simulations.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 12:37:28 PM | |
| So after nineteen years I have finally broken down and bought a Super Nintendo. Finally I can beat Super Mario World. Unfortunately, it's a little yellowed, having been buried in a block of ice from the Ice Age of the 1990s, so I will have to use some stunningly-toxic "retr0bright" solution to clear that up. But no mind - on with the game news. Is anyone surprised that StarCraft 2 is topping sales charts? No? I didn't think so. What did surprise me is that you can go to see a Blizzard art exhibit, and that Korean Air has a Starcraft 2 jumbo jet. As a rally car fan (and semi-homologated rally car owner), I'm excited to see Dirt 3 return to having snow and rain so I can accurately recreate my drive to work. Funny, I don't remember there being so many huge jumps on the B-road behind my office, and I only did handbrake turns under an exploding tractor-trailer twice. In indie game news, the easiest way to sell a videogame to me is to pitch a Roman warrior against what appears to be a Revolutionary War British soldier. Thus put, Arvoesine delivers. You may also be interested in NeonPlat 2, which makes me go kind of crosseyed as I try to figure out the Magic Eye puzzle that is every one of its screenshots. Berlin Indie Game Jam is this week, IGF 2011 is still open for entries (including iPhone games for the grand prize), and the Action 52 project I mentioned last week is still in full swing. Only a cheater man (har!) would not want to play a redubbed and tweaked Action 52. Excited for Fable III? Get started creating villagers now. Up at the top of today's Daily, I mentioned that I discovered the Super Nintendo nineteen years late, but it would appear that Konami has yet to release arcade games from their tight grasp. Metal Gear Arcade is having a test showing in some Japanese arcades. Anyone want to submit a trip report? Before you go today, don't ride a jetski for 32,000 kilometers. Your butt is going to be really sore. Plus, sharks. Read More.. | 6 Comments | |
| GroundWiz RTS Procedural Planter Released | |
| Posted by: Gugila at 5:42:43 AM | |
| Gugila has announced the release of GroundWiz RTS (version 2.0). GroundWiz RTS is a set of procedural shaders for rendering nature in real-time applications. GroundWiz RTS now supports procedural nature planting via GroundWiz RTS Planter. It brings highly advanced procedural planting (instancing) to real-time environments. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Sunday, August 1, 2010 | |
| 3D Rad v7.02b Now Supports PhysX Box Primitives | |
| Posted by: 3D Rad at 8:50:39 AM | |
 The August 2010 release of 3D Rad, besides bringing several new features for v6.49, includes version 7.02 (beta) of 3D Rad! This v7 update introduces PhysX support for all rigid-body-based objects and all objects based on scanning and ray casting (path-finding A.I., autonomous car-driving A.I.). Furthermore, unlike v6, v7 now allows you to make your collision detection models by combining both spheres and boxes in your favorite 3d modeler (3D Studio Max, etc)! This month also sees version 6.46 of 3D Rad, which includes features allowing to create multiplayer games without coding, becoming public and available for download at the 3D Rad website. 3D Rad is a freeware, user-friendly 3d editor with a straightforward developing workflow and ready-to-use physics simulation. You can use it to create any sort of stand-alone, interactive 3d project for Windows 7/Vista/XP. Ideal for CG artists and non-coders, but flexible enough to meet the needs of expert developers as well. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
